A Picture is Worth... Seeing the World in Carbon Emissions

Scientists may still not have a handle on where all that carbon dioxide ends up in the atmosphere, but they - and policy analysts - do at least know which countries those emissions originate from. WaPo staff cartographer Nathaniel Vaughn Kelso recently highlighted the above gem, a Dorling cartogram showing the world's carbon emissions (called "Carbon Atlas"), on his personal blog.

Here's how Kelso describes this neat cartogram (see this site for a description of the Dorling cartogram style):

"Note how the world map below shows true geography and establishes the region color code. Graduated circles, by region, establish proportions between regions and later iterate onto the background of the Europe detail image. Circles are labeled by rank on the main map (Europe clip below). Graduated circle labels could have been augmented with the 2 digit county code in many cases (e.g. 64CH for Switzerland). Use the table at the very bottom to lookup the rank number by continent to get the country name, total tons of C02 emissions, and ton-per-person equivalent."